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Maestro Anton Coppola brings his lifelong fascination with Sacco and Vanzetti to the stage, but don't expect him to solve the case.
By JOHN FLEMING
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 15, 2001
Growing up in New York's Italian Harlem, Anton Coppola was fascinated by the Sacco-Vanzetti case, an international cause celebre of the 1920s. Two Italian anarchists in Boston were tried for murder, convicted and -- after six years of appeals and protests -- electrocuted.
Coppola became an opera conductor, but his fascination with the case continued during a long, distinguished career in the pit. He always thought it had the makings of a great opera.
"I thought the two characters were so operatic, and what happened to them was so operatic," he said. "What's more dramatic than an execution?"
Now, more than 70 years later, the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center is premiering Coppola's opera, Sacco & Vanzetti, this weekend. The maestro, who wrote both the score and libretto, will also conduct.
One of the most interesting aspects of Coppola's opera is its relationship to the historical context of the case.
"It was the political trial of the 20th century," said Nunzio Pernicone, a historian of Italian radicalism who vetted a draft of the libretto at Coppola's request. "It took place as part of a wave of government persecution against radicals that focused on foreigners, especially Italian radicals. The government basically crushed and annihilated the American left, which has never recovered."
Liberal conventional wisdom over the years has taken it as an article of faith that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent victims of a witch hunt. But experts now believe it's possible that Sacco may have, in fact, been involved in the murder of a shoe factory paymaster and guard during a robbery in South Braintree, Mass.
Coppola was cautioned about coming to any hasty conclusions.
"I warned him that they're going to cream you if you make Sacco and Vanzetti into lambs who were innocent beyond any shadow of doubt," Pernicone said. "I said you have to have at least some ambivalence in this interpretation."
Coppola said he took Pernicone's advice to heart. "I try to show that there were two sides to this thing, that these men were, after all, anarchists. They were against our way of life, but they were honest in their belief. Unfortunately, there was a crime and two men were killed. Were they responsible for it? We don't know."
Sacco & Vanzetti also has particular historical significance to Tampa's Ybor City, a hotbed of radicalism in the 1920s when Italian, Spanish and Cuban immigrants worked in the cigar factories.
"Sacco and Vanzetti represented one of the high-water marks of radical popularity in Ybor City," said Gary R. Mormino, a University of South Florida historian and co-author of The Immigrant World of Ybor City. "The trial and execution would have been one of the most intensely followed and passionate moments in Ybor City history."
Coppola's opera has another Ybor City connection in one of its main characters, a leading Italian anarchist named Carlo Tresca. In 1913, Tresca visited Tampa and spoke at a cigar workers' picnic on May Day. Later, he had a key role in the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
Several times during the seven-year course of the affair, cigar workers went on strike in support of Sacco and Vanzetti. Leftists raised money for defense funds, held rallies and gathered petitions in Ybor City. On Aug. 23, 1927, the day of the execution, the largest meeting in the history of the Italian Club was held to "bid farewell to our noble comrades."
"I cannot think of another single event that so galvanized Ybor City," said Mormino, who has talked with Coppola about the opera. "Tampa really is the proper place for this to debut because of the association with Ybor City."
The historian acknowledges that the Sacco-Vanzetti case is not the political and cultural touchstone it once was. "I bet if you went outside Centro Ybor today and asked 100 people if they know Sacco and Vanzetti, more would know Gucci and Armani," he said.
Mormino relishes the irony of an opera on the anarchist pair. He points out that there were some episodes of anarchists bombing opera houses -- havens of the elite -- in Spain and Italy.
"The more you think of Sacco & Vanzetti at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, the more you think of the unreality of it. Sacco and Vanzetti are probably either rolling in their graves or chuckling. Here are two despised figures, who despised capitalism, having an opera celebrating their lives. Only in America."
Pernicone, an associate professor of history at Drexel University in Philadelphia, is writing the biography of Tresca. He laments the bomb-throwing stereotype of the anarchist, a stereotype that contributed to hysteria surrounding the Sacco-Vanzetti case. Instead, he said, anarchism is better understood as a utopian philosophy.
"It comes from the Greek word anarchos, which means 'without government.' It's a political philosophy which regards authority as constituted by government as the ultimate source of repression.
"Presumably, at some point in time, men will learn to live with each other in free association without institutions of authority. Most people don't buy that -- I don't buy that -- but anarchists believe it."
Coppola remembers the fervor of 1920s leftist politics because members of his family were involved. "My father's brother-in-law, a bricklayer, was a communist," he said. "One day he came over with a piece of music called Bandiera Rossa, which means 'Red Flag.' It was the official song of the anarchists, and I played it for him on the piano. I incorporated that tune into my opera."
Coppola consulted Pernicone and other experts about Sacco & Vanzetti, but a certain amount of literary license was unavoidable.
"I'm an opera lover myself, and I told Anton that what I had heard of his music was a cross between Leoncavallo and Giordano," Pernicone said. "But what could happen is that people will judge his historical treatment rather than the music. He could get criticized on that basis, particularly from conservatives who are absolutely convinced that Sacco and Vanzetti did it. This opera could be attacked for political reasons rather than artistic ones."
Coppola's response is that turning the facts of history into the fiction of opera is not uncommon. Puccini's Tosca takes place during the Napoleonic wars. Giordano's Andrea Chenier deals with the French Revolution. Donizetti wrote a series of operas on historical figures, including Lucrezia Borgia, Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda.
These operas aren't notably faithful to history, but they're performed over and over again because their music and drama exert a hold on audiences.
"History doesn't necessarily make a good opera," Coppola said. "Boris Godunov is the best example. A great opera, but it's historically inaccurate. But who cares? If you want a history lesson, go to college and take History 101."
Sacco & Vanzetti, an opera with music and text by Anton Coppola, premieres in an Opera Tampa production at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Performances are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $19.50-$55.50. (813) 229-7827 or (800) 955-1045. For more information about the opera, see the Web site, http://www.saccoandvanzetti-theopera.org.